Third biggest U.S. opening weekend of all time after Dark Knight and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 . . .

Turns out that a lot of people still read and a lot of them read the popular Hunger Games novels by Suzanne Collins!

The Hunger Games actually managed to beat out all of the Twilight movies when it comes to opening weekend grosses!

It also has the biggest opening weekend for a non-sequel too, beating out Alice in Wonderland ($116.1 million).

According to box office analysts it is interesting to note that:

a) Lionsgate’s marketing managed to attract nonfans of the novels. “Demand for The Hunger Games exists across a wide array of moviegoers, and isn’t just rooted in the type of rabid fans that drove the front-loaded openings for recent Harry Potter and Twilight movies,” says BoxOfficeMojo.com.

b) Majority of the audience for the movie were female. In comparison, 80 percent of the audience for Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 was female. Seems that more girls were able to drag their boyfriends or husbands into seeing Hunger Games than with Twilight then!

c) The audience for Hunger Games was slightly older than that for Twilight as well: 56 percent were 25 years of age and up.

d) Audience reaction was largely positive.

This is all good news for Lionsgate. At $80 million it was one of their more expensive productions and had it tanked could easily have taken the studio with it.

Speaking of tanking, the weekend was bad for John Carter which dropped 63 percent at the U.S, box office to just over $5 million. Its 17-day haul at the box office now stands at just $62.3 million, which is less than what Hunger Games made on its opening day!

About the Author

James has been running The Sci-Fi Movie Page since Before the Beginning of Time Itself (TM), i.e. since the site's inception in 1997. In addition to sci-fi James also likes 1970s motorbikes and chili dogs although he doesn't own the former and no longer eats the latter. He currently resides in Kiev, Ukraine for reasons best left unexplained.